Bidding activity slowed a bit this week for the 100 megahertz of spectrum in the 600 MHz band up for bid, though total easily surpasses 700 MHz proceedings
The Federal Communications Commission’s 600 MHz incentive auction process is at least for the moment the second highest-grossing spectrum auction in terms of total “winning” bids, having now surpassed the 700 MHz spectrum auction that concluded in 2008.
Through 23 bidding rounds, the forward auction portion of the incentive auction proceedings had garnered nearly $22.1 billion in total winning bids, with net proceeds at $21.4 billion. The current auction includes 100 megahertz of licensed spectrum grouped together in 10-megahertz chunks of various amounts across the country.
The latest bidding rounds included the FCC moving to increase per-round bidding increments from 5% up through round 21, to 10% beginning with round 22, which could support a surge in overall auction revenue as bidders seriously interested in licenses will need to get more strategic in their plans.
Through round 23, 10 licenses centered on New York City remained the largest revenue generators, with 19 bids of $433.3 million each. The FCC counts only the number of bids equal to the number of licenses available in its overall auction total.
Analysts have noted current activity has slowed since last week, but still remains relatively robust. Many expect the current proceedings to wrap up sometime in late September.
The current auction is still well short of the more than $88 billion in total proceeds needed to meet television broadcaster financial demands for the low-band spectrum up for bid. Most analysts predict the current auction stage will fall short of that total, which will require the FCC to lower the total amount of spectrum available for the commercial wireless space through at least a second phase of reverse-auction activity.
The 700 MHz auction managed to attract $19.4 billion in total auction proceeds from the 84 megahertz of spectrum up for bid, which was passed in 2015 by the AWS-3 spectrum auction that garnered more than $44 billion in gross bids from 65 megahertz of spectrum focused in the 1.7/2.1 GHz band.
Similar to recent spectrum auctions, the FCC is only releasing bidding information on markets and not on which bidders have placed those bids. The current auction has 62 qualified bidders, including the likes of Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile US, U.S. Cellular and C Spire.
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